The phonological system of the Polish language is similar in many ways to those of other Slavic languages, although there are some characteristic features found in only a few other languages of the family, such as contrasting postalveolar and alveolo-palatal fricatives and affricates. The vowel system is relatively simple, with just six oral monophthongs and arguably two nasals in traditional speech, while the consonant system is much more complex.

Vowels

The Polish vowel system consists of six oral sounds. Traditionally, it was also said to include two nasal monophthongs, with Polish considered the last Slavic language that had preserved nasal sounds that existed in Proto-Slavic. However, recent sources present for modern Polish a vowel system without nasal vowel phonemes, including only the aforementioned six oral vowels.

Oral

Close

Mid

Open

Distribution

The vowels and have largely complementary distribution. Either vowel may follow a labial consonant, as in mi ('to me') and my ('we'). Elsewhere, however, is usually restricted to word-initial position and positions after alveolo-palatal consonants and approximants, while cannot appear in those positions (see § Hard and soft consonants below). Either vowel may follow a velar fricative but after velar the vowel is limited to rare loanwords e.g. kynologia ('cynology') and gyros ('gyro'). Dental, postalveolar consonants and approximants are followed by in native or assimilated words. However, appears outside its usual positions in some foreign-derived words, as in chipsy ('potato chips') and tir ('large lorry', see TIR). The degree of palatalization in these contexts is weak. In some phonological descriptions of Polish that make a phonemic distinction between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants, and may thus be treated as allophones of a single phoneme. In the past, was closer to, which is acoustically more similar to.

Nasal

Nasal vowels do not feature uniform nasality over their duration. Phonetically, they consist of an oral vowel followed by a nasal semivowel or (są is pronounced, which sounds closer to Portuguese são than French sont – all three words mean '(they) are'). Therefore, they are phonetically diphthongs. (For nasality following other vowel nuclei, see § Allophony below.)

Phonological status

The nasal phonemes appear in older phonological descriptions of Polish e.g., ,. In more recent descriptions the orthographic nasal vowels ą, ę are analyzed as two phonemes in all contexts e.g.,. Before a fricative and in word-final position (in the case of ą) they are transcribed as an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant or. Under such an analysis, the list of consonantal phonemes is extended by a velar nasal phoneme or by two nasal approximants,.

Distribution

If analyzed as separate phonemes, nasal vowels do not occur except before a fricative and in word-final position. When the letters ą and ę appear before stops and affricates, they indicate an oral or followed by a nasal consonant homorganic with the following consonant. For example, kąt ('angle', 'corner') is, gęba ('mouth') is , pięć ('five') is and bąk ('bumble bee') is , as if they were spelled *kont, *gemba, *pieńć and *bonk. Before or, nasality is lost altogether, and ą and ę are pronounced as oral // or //. The sequence is also denasalized to // in word-final position, as in 'I will be'.

Historical development

Distinction between vowel lengths was inherited from late Proto-Slavic, although in Polish only some pretonic long vowels and vowels with the neoacute retained length. Additional vowel lengths were introduced in Proto-Polish (as in other West Slavic languages) as a result of compensatory lengthening when a yer in the next syllable disappeared according to Havlík's law. In Polish this only happened in penultimate syllables (which thus became final syllables) before a voiced consonant (in other Slavic languages where a similar process occurred this could be more general). The resultant system of vowel lengths was similar to what is today preserved in Czech and to a lesser degree in Slovak, although the distribution of the sounds often differed (for example in Czech the old acute also lengthened vowels). In the emerging modern Polish, however, the long vowels were shortened again but sometimes (depending on dialect) with a change in quality (the vowels tended to become higher). The latter changes came to be incorporated into the standard language only in the case of long o and the long nasal vowel. The vowel shift may thus be presented as follows: The that was once a long is still distinguished in script as ó, except in some words which were later respelled, such as bruzda, dłuto, pruć (instead of etymological brózda, dłóto, próć). In most circumstances, consonants were palatalized when followed by an original front vowel, including the soft yer (ь) that was often later lost. For example: *dьnь became dzień ('day'), while *dьnьmъ became dniem ('day' instr.). Nasal vowels *ę and *ǫ of late Proto-Slavic merged (*ę leaving a trace by palatalizing the preceding consonant) to become the medieval Polish vowel, written ø. Like other Polish vowels, it developed long and short variants. The short variant developed into present-day ę, while the long form became, written ą, as described above. Overall: The historical shifts are the reason for the alternations o:ó and ę:ą commonly encountered in Polish morphology: *rogъ ('horn') became róg due to the loss of the following yer (originally pronounced with a long o, now with ), and the instrumental case of the same word went from *rogъmъ to rogiem (with no lengthening of the o). Similarly, *dǫbъ ('oak') became dąb (originally with the long form of the nasal vowel), and in the instrumental case, *dǫbъmъ the vowel remained short, causing the modern dębem.

Dialectal variation

Polish dialects differ particularly in their realization of nasal vowels, both in terms of whether and when they are decomposed to an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant and in terms of the quality of the vowels used. Also, some dialects preserve nonstandard developments of historical long vowels (see previous section); for example, a may be pronounced with in words in which it was historically long.

Consonants

The Polish consonant system is more complicated; its characteristic features include the series of affricates and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish and Belarusian.

Phonemes

The consonant phonemes of Polish are as follows: The tongue shape of the postalveolar sounds is similar to the shape postalveolar approximant (one of the realizations of the English phoneme, see also Pronunciation of English /r/). The alveolo-palatals are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised to the hard palate but a greater area of the front of the tongue is raised close to the hard palate compared to the English palato-alveolar sounds. The series are known as "rustling" (szeleszczące) and "soughing" (szumiące) respectively; the equivalent alveolar series is called "hissing" (syczące). Polish contrasts affricates and stop–fricative clusters by the fricative components being consistently longer in clusters than in affricates. Stops in clusters may have either a plosive release accompanied by a weak aspiration or a fricated release (as in an affricate) depending on the rate of speech and individual speech habits. Both realizations of stop-fricative clusters are considered correct and typically respelled as tsz, d-ż and czsz, dżż respectively in normative descriptions of Polish pronunciation. The distinction is lost in colloquial pronunciation in south-eastern Poland both being realized as simple affricates as in some Lesser Polish dialects. According to, , such a simplification is allowed in the standard language variety only before another consonant or before a juncture, e.g. trzmiel or ('bumblebee'), patrz or ('look', imper. sing.). For the possibility of an additional velar fricative for ⟨h⟩, see § Dialectal variation below. On the same grounds as for gives a phonemic status for speakers who have in their system.

Allophones

Distribution

Polish, like other Slavic languages, permits complex consonant clusters, which often arose from the disappearance of yers (see § Historical development above). Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny ('unconditional' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło ('blade of grass'), ('shock'), and krnąbrność ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from a verse by Jan Brzechwa) is ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reeds'). For the restrictions on combinations of voiced and voiceless consonants in clusters, see § Voicing and devoicing below. Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants: the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel. The consonant is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede i or y. (For other restrictions on consonants appearing before i or y, see § Distribution above.)

Voicing and devoicing

Polish obstruents (stops, affricates and fricatives) are subject to voicing and devoicing in certain positions. This leads to neutralization of voiced/voiceless pairs in those positions (or equivalently, restrictions on the distribution of voiced and voiceless consonants). The phenomenon applies in word-final position and in consonant clusters. In Polish consonant clusters, including across a word boundary, the obstruents are all voiced or all voiceless. To determine (based on the spelling of the words) whether a given cluster has voiced or voiceless obstruents, the last obstruent in the cluster, excluding w or rz (but including ż), should be examined to see if it appears to be voiced or voiceless. The consonants n, m, ń, r, j, l, ł do not represent obstruents and so do not affect the voicing of other consonants; they are also usually not subject to devoicing except when surrounded by unvoiced consonants. Some examples follow (click the words to hear them spoken): In some dialects of Wielkopolska and the eastern borderlands, remains voiced after voiceless consonants. The above rule does not apply to sonorants: a consonant cluster may contain voiced sonorants and voiceless obstruents, as in, , słoń , tnąc. Utterance-finally, obstruents are pronounced voiceless. For example, the in bóg ('god') is pronounced, and the in zajazd ('inn') represents. If followed by a word beginning with an obstruent then the above cluster rules apply across morpheme boundaries. When the second word begins with a sonorant the voicing of any preceding word-final obstruent varies regionally. In western and southern Poland, final obstruents are voiced (voicing pronunciation) if the following word starts with a sonorant (here, for example, the in brat ojca 'father's brother' would be pronounced as ). On the other hand, they are voiceless (devoicing pronunciation) in eastern and northern Poland ( is pronounced ). This rule does not apply to prepositional clitics w, z, bez, przez, nad, pod, od, przed which are always voiced before sonorants.

Hard and soft consonants

Multiple palatalizations and some depalatalizations that took place in the history of Proto-Slavic and Polish have created quite a complex system of what are often called "soft" and "hard" consonants. These terms are useful in describing some inflection patterns and other morphological processes, but exact definitions of "soft" and "hard" may differ somewhat. "Soft" generally refers to the palatal nature of a consonant. The alveolo-palatal sounds are considered soft, as normally is the palatal. The sound is also normally classed as a soft consonant: like the preceding sounds, it cannot be followed by but takes instead. The palatalized velars, and might also be regarded as soft on this basis. Consonants not classified as soft are dubbed "hard". However, a subset of hard consonants,, often derive from historical palatalizations (for example, usually represents a historical palatalized ) and behaves like the soft consonants in some respects (for example, they normally take in the nominative plural). These sounds may be called "hardened" or "historically soft" consonants. The historical palatalized forms of some consonants have developed in Polish into noticeably different sounds: historical palatalized t, d, r have become the sounds now represented by respectively. Similarly palatalized became the sounds. The palatalization of labials has resulted (according to the main phonological analysis given in the sections above) in the addition of, as in the example pies just given. These developments are reflected in some regular morphological changes in Polish grammar, such as in noun declension.

Phonological status of palatalized consonants

In some phonological descriptions of Polish, however, consonants, including especially the labials m, p, b, f, w, are regarded as occurring in "hard" and "soft" pairs. In this approach, for example, the word pies ('dog') is analyzed not as but as, with a soft. These consonants are then also analyzed as soft when they precede the vowel (as in pić 'to drink'). Unlike their equivalents in Russian, these consonants cannot retain their softness in the syllable coda (when not followed by a vowel). For example, the word for "carp" has the inflected forms karpia, karpie etc., with soft (or, depending on the analysis), but the nominative singular is karp, with a hard. Similar considerations lead to two competing analyses of palatalized velars. In, all three palatalized velars are given phonological status on the grounds of their distribution and minimal contrasts between , , and , , e.g. giełda ('stock market'), magiel ('laundry press ') but giętki ('flexible'), higiena ('hygiene'). Phonemes, and do not occur before where they are separated by a distinct e.g. kiosk ('kiosk'), filologia ('philology'), Hiob ('Job'). A system with and but without is given by, , and. This analysis is based on an assumption that there is actually no but only as chie, hie occur only in loanwords. However, a decomposed palatalization of kie, gie i.e., in all contexts is a predominant pronunciation in contemporary Polish. Based on that, a system without palatalized velars is given by, and. In such a system palatalized velars are analyzed as, and before and , and before other vowels. This is the main analysis presented above. The consonants t, d, r (and some others) can also be regarded as having hard and soft forms according to the above approach, although the soft forms occur only in loanwords such as tir ('large lorry'; see TIR). If the distinction is made for all relevant consonants, then y and i can be regarded as allophones of a single phoneme, with y following hard consonants and i following soft ones (and in initial position).

Glottal stop

In more contemporary Polish, a phonetic glottal stop may appear as the onset of a vowel-initial word (e.g. Ala ). It may also appear following word-final vowels to connote particular affects; for example, nie ('no') is normally pronounced, but may instead be pronounced or in a prolonged interrupted. This intervocalic glottal stop may also break up a vowel hiatus, even when one appears morpheme-internally, as in poeta ('poet') or Ukraina ('Ukraine'). A relatively new phenomenon in Polish is the expansion of the usage of glottal stops. In the past, initial vowels were pronounced with an initial voiceless glottal fricative (so that Ala was pronounced ), pre-iotation (so that igła ('needle') was pronounced ), or pre-labialization (so that oko 'eye' was pronounced ).

Dialectal variation

In some Polish dialects (found in the eastern borderlands and in Upper Silesia) there is an additional voiced velar fricative, represented by the letter ⟨h⟩. It may be actually a voiced glottal fricative [] for some speakers, especially word-finally. In most varieties of Polish, both ⟨h⟩ and ⟨ch⟩ represent. Some eastern dialects also preserve the velarized dental lateral approximant,, which corresponds to in most varieties of Polish. Those dialects also can palatalize to in every position, but standard Polish does so only allophonically before and. and are also common realizations in native speakers of Polish from Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. notes that students of Polish philology were hostile towards the lateral variant of ⟨ł⟩, saying that it sounded "unnatural" and "awful". Some of the students also said that they perceived the lateral ⟨ł⟩ as a variant of ⟨l⟩, which, he further notes, along with the necessity of deciding from context whether the sound meant was or, made people hostile towards the sound. On the other hand, some Poles view the lateral variant with nostalgia, associating it with the elegant culture of interwar Poland. In the Masurian dialects and some neighboring dialects, mazurzenie occurs: postalveolar merge with the corresponding dentals unless is spelled ⟨rz⟩ (a few centuries ago, it represented a fricative trill, distinct from ; only the latter sound occurs in modern Polish).

Stress

The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate: the second-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress: in a four-syllable word, if the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first. There must be a syllable for each written vowel except when the letter i precedes another vowel (in that case the i represents either, or palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both, depending on analysis; see Polish orthography and the above). Also, the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels after another vowel, as in autor ('author'); these semivowels mostly occur in loanwords (so not in native nauka 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized Mateusz 'Matthew'). Some loanwords, particularly from classical languages, have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-last) syllable. For example, fizyka ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. That may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement: muzyka 'music' vs. muzyka – genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When further syllables are added at the end of such words through suffixation, the stress normally becomes regular: uniwersytet (, 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu and derived adjective uniwersytecki have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Over time, loanwords tend to become nativized to have a penultimate stress. Another class of exceptions to the usual stress pattern is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy etc. Those endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress: zrobiłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable and zrobilibyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive grammars, the same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zrobiliśmy 'we did' is said to be correctly stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as zrobiliśmy). The irregular stress patterns in the presence of these verb endings are explained by the fact that the endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of kogo zobaczyliście? ('whom did you see?') it is possible to say kogoście zobaczyli? – here kogo retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns. Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were a single word. That applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), przeze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable of the preposition.

Historical phonology